Tupac murder: Former gang leader talked himself into prison for the rapper’s killing

Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was shot in Las Vegas, the murder mystery has reached a courtroom verdict. A jury convicted 63-year-old Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis, who had already been arrested on suspicion of murder in 2023 and now faces a possible life sentence.

Shakur was shot from a passing car on Sept. 7, 1996, while sitting in the front passenger seat of a BMW driven by record executive Marion “Suge” Knight. The rapper died from his injuries six days later. The gunfire came from the rear window of a Cadillac traveling alongside them.

Davis did not hold the weapon, but the trial found that he planned the killing and placed the gun in the back seat. His nephew Orlando Anderson and DeAndrae Smith were sitting there, and all three men belonged to the Crips gang. Davis told police that he gave the gun to Smith, who did not want to take it, before Anderson accepted it and fired.

The identity of the shooter may remain unresolved. A witness linked to Davis’s gang told a grand jury in 2023 that Anderson sat on the right side of the back seat, while the shots came through the left-side window. That would have required Anderson to reach across the larger Smith. Anderson, Smith and the driver, Terence Brown, have all since died.

The case grew out of hostility between Los Angeles street gangs, the Bloods and the Crips. Shakur and Knight were linked to the Mob Piru Bloods, while Davis and the other Crips members were their rivals. Before the Las Vegas shooting, Anderson and other Crips members attacked Mob Piru member Trevon Lane and stole a gold necklace Knight had given him. After a later fight involving Lane, Shakur, Knight and Anderson at a Las Vegas hotel, Davis set out with his group on a retaliatory mission that ended with Shakur’s death. Davis’s defense lawyer, Michael Sanft, tried to show that the accounts Davis gave in his memoirs were false.